State Schools'

June 12, 1985|The Morning Call

To the Editor:

The recent Supreme Court decision reaffirming the constitutional ban on prayer in "public schools" again raises the obvious but unspoken point: "Public schools" are not public schools in the true sense at all - they are all "state schools." The school is not a public one but a "state-run school system."

Oh, the school system started out as a public system run by small community groups of parents who built the schoolhouse, hired and paid a school teacher and, through volunteer assistance, provided a basic and Christian education to their children. Their children's education was under their immediate supervision, authority and control. The scope and content of the education their children received remained their responsibility and no one else's.

Then the trouble began. The "state" became involved. Politicians passed laws mandating education, licensing teachers, specifying courses, hours of instruction, etc., and by their intermeddling, usurped the parents' authority and control of their children's education. "Public schools" no longer belonged to the parents but to the "state." Political offices were created to take theplace of the parents. They were called "school boards." Landowners, not parents, were made responsible for the costs of "state" schools through unlimited taxing authority politicians gave the newly created public offices of "school board."

When states started their own income taxes, politicians again got into the act, promising allocation of taxes to support "state" schools and further insulating parents from control of the education their children received.

The situation worsened when teachers pressured politicians to pass "tenure" laws and "unionizing" and "right to strike" statutes, creating an adversary relationship between teachers and the "state." Parents could no longer fire unsatisfactory teachers, or indeed control whether their children would even receive any education at all in a "state" school during a teachers' strike against the "state."

Jimmy Carter's "Department of Education" at the federal level removed any vestige of the sham that our children were receiving a "public" education. Unquestionably, it is a "state education" controlled at the state and federal level!

Fed up? The solution? Abolish "state schools." Yes, dump the "state school system." Write your legislator. You can make it happen. Our so-called "private" and "parochial" schools are the only truly public schools we have today. Let's get the politicians and the "state" and the teachers' unions out of the picture. It is clear from the statistics they have done a terrible job anyway.